These sites are not in any particular order. We found them very useful in planning our trip, getting ideas, and understanding the countries and cultures we are traveling to.
1. TravelFish: http://www.travelfish.org
This site is geared towards Southeast Asia including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This site has message boards, travel stories, travel tips and ideas, and "Things to do before you go". This site breaks down each country into sections on weather, accommodations, traveling within the country, visas, general facts, and border crossings and regulations.
Great source of first hand information. Active community of travelers who post reports on locations throughout South East Asia. They also have great travel guides (for free and can buy more detailed versions). They have great articles that pretty much answer any question you might have about traveling in SE Asia. Definitely worth checking out!
2. BootsnAll Travel Network: http://www.bootsnall.com/
This site is great resource for location specific information on flights, sleeping arrangements, activities, and transportation. In addition, this site includes destination fact sheets, blogs and travel stories. This site is also a great resource for travel insurance and information on visas and using cell phone's abroad.
3. Travel Independent. Info: http://www.travelindependent.info/index.htm
This site is perfect for any and all backpackers. It provides destination specific information like what to pack, when the best time to go is, what to expect, and background information on that location. This site also provide general useful information for any trip such as things to do before you go (ex. insurance and immunizations), how to take care of everyday life on the road (ex. laundry,keeping in touch, and illness), and ideas for those that don't have their trip planned.
4. World Nomads: http://www.worldnomads.com/
This is the site we bought additional travel insurance. It covers a range of things and geared towards the "adventure" type traveler. The rates are also reasonable.
5. Charles Schwab Investment Services:
We went with a checking account with Charles
Schwab. They require you to open a brokerage account when opening a checking account, but we found this company to be unique in a sense that they do not charge international ATM fees. I will state this again, when traveling anywhere, you will not be charge a fee (aside from currency conversion fees) to withdraw money from a ATM fee and if you are charged a fee Charles
Schwab will reimburse you for the fee. When traveling for an extended period of time this is an important factor that could cost you in the end.
6. The Webs Original Travel Blog:
http://www.travelpod.com/This site is mainly a blogging platform. We used this site to read about others trips to get ideas for our own trip. It was helpful to read what people liked and disliked, as well as how they got from once place to another. Reading what went wrong and what went right will hopefully help to prepare us for our trip.
7. Travel Blog; Travel Bogs, Photos, Videos, and Maps:
http://www.travelblog.org/This is another travel blogging website. We used it the same as describe above.
8. Our Travel Blog! http://trekn.blogspot.com/We went with
blogspot.com for our blog
becasue of the ease of customizing and editing the website. It was important for use to chose a site that wold backup and protect our content (such as our pictures and videos) and a site that would be easy to update and edit on the road. Google for the win!
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